Twilight Descending
by Charlotte2
Summary: Finally, new chapter up! Quinn confronts some old skeletons, reliving a night from his past that he would of liked to stay buried. Bumped up for language, and a violent scene or two. Pls. R&R! Thanx!!
1. Prologue

            The rain had stopped.  Finally.  

            Palveia sat dismally on the stone balcony, overlooking the run down court yard of the apartment complex where she and Quinn had been staying for the last few weeks.  Cracked pottery and flares of wild flowers choked through knots of withered brown plants, their brittle leaves parched beneath a layer of white flecked soil, too poor now for anything to grow.  Now and again a wind stirred, swirling the shattered clay pots and lashing the flowers loose of their roots.  The dark haired witch watched the slow decay and sighed into her hands.

            Twelve days since Quinn had disappeared.  Twelve days for her to become undone.     

The two of them had been living in Goth, in a sun beaten old apartment complex in the heart of the slums.  She had been trying to forget her past, and Quinn had been trying to piece back together his life.  When they had finally run out of places to run to, they had come here, back to city of their childhoods to wait out the slow weaving of the summer and hope.  But hope had not come.  And the crumbling rented room held only one now, and Palveia was drowning between the walls.

She hadn't dared to leave the building.  The groceries were going rancid in the fridge, because Palveia couldn't leave to get anything fresh, and because she couldn't bring herself to eat the meat that was there.  She had always carried herself through hard times with a fistful of steak, or lamb, something bloody and with lots of spice.  But there was nothing feral in her now, and the meat only made her nauseous.  The vegetables, they were tainted too, the smell of festering blood absorbed into their wilting bodies so that she couldn't get the picture of dead pig, adorned in a splendour of vegetables, out of her mind.  

The smell of the rotting meat had driven her to the balcony, and she had stayed there for almost three days now.  She had wound a twist of scrap wool around her shoulders to use as a blanket, salvaged from the assortment of colourful items abandoned in the courtyard.  She wore her jewels always.  The bright Red droplets set in simple mounts of red flashed on her fingers, and the misty Opal hung at her throat, the exact color of the twilight. And another, more perilous piece of jewellery; A Black Widow's hour glass, the gold sand caught in the bottom and glittering brightly.  

Shuddering a little in the raking winds that blew in over the ruinous city, Palveia leaned into her blanket.  Her Widow's necklace showered sparks of golden light to dance in the courtyard, and she watched the patterns that they formed.  Two golden eyes.  And when the sun shifted, a golden web, shimmering with a brighter light where the strands intersected.  So many patterns, reshaping with each flash of sunlight, with each scrape of dusty wind.  She needed to weave, but over the users she had dulled her instincts until she was unworthy of the Black Widow's hourglass, and no longer trusted her hands to weave a true web.  But there were visions here, so many visions.  And deep within her, in a part that was not Black Widow, or witch, or woman, she knew those visions needed to be woven.

It was the damn city that was driving her mad.  Palveia had grown up in Goth.  The city, with its crumbling architecture; twisted spires; sun bleached stone; broken pavement that gleamed too blackly, it all kindled a nostalgia for the days before, when she had been nothing more then a simple gutter waif.  Before she had made her offering, and become dangerous.

 The waning sun flashed once more before disappearing beyond the Goth, and the sand in her hourglass made a new pattern.  What she saw is only for a Black Widow to tell, but whatever it was, it roused her enough to shed her tattered blanket and stand, hands braced against the railing, to take a lingering look.  Then she went inside, all resolutions broken save for that she must leave Goth.  The city was swirling with too much memory, too much past.  What she had seen was a vision of the future, and it was beyond the melancholy city that was slowly returning to the dust.  

Two more days, she decided, as she threw the contents of the fridge into a plastic bag, which she later heaved over the balcony and into the courtyard.  Two more days and then she would leave, and perhaps again reclaim herself as a Black Widow to weave this final vision.  

Two more days.  


	2. Owen's mysterious visiter

It was in the autumn that Owen met Dhemlan's heir for the first time. He remembers this, because he was raking leaves, damp with a cold rain that would soon be snow. He hadn't bothered with his cloak, and the leaves had clung to the soaking hems of his pants as he raked. He tried to pretend that the rain was snow, but the colors of the leaves, they were too assaulting for even him to believe that the world was balanced on the edge of winter, and that soon would all be dissolved into slate grey skies and a white flecked landscape.  
  
While he was raking, and pretending, the little witch had appeared. At first, he thought her hair was a web of snow on the bleached oak branches, and he had been jubilant for a moment. And then the girl shifted, and he realized there was a girl, and that the snow was her hair, tumbling wild around her shoulders and caught back from her face in ring of autumn leaves.  
  
She smiled at him as she approached. Owen did not notice her eyes, not at first. He was young, and too practical to be a romantic. So the first thing he noticed was her shoes. The wet leaves clung to them as she shuffled forwards, and he noticed the gold chased buckles on them, and the smoothness of the leather. She wore a slight heel on them, and the toes were tapered, as was the fashion. A noble, he had thought then, a woman of consequence. If only he knew.  
  
The white haired girl seemed a wild thing. Her wind swept hair, held back in combs of leaves, and the rain on her dress glittering like jewels in the waning sunlight. This girl, she wore the elements about her like a cloak. Except for her shoes. That made him wonder, but he didn't say anything, just kept raking. Owen was silent by nature, and in the presence of a noblewoman, he was slightly awed, and words evaded him. So he raked and she smiled and the sun began to set, setting the leaves to burning as the light caught their water edged surfaces.  
  
"Why are you raking leaves?" she asked finally.  
  
Her guise faded a little, as the wind beat the leaves from her hair and the rain from her cheeks. Save for her moonlight hair, she seemed normal, mundane almost. And her questions were blatant and silly. A noblewoman then, he thought to himself. His rake combed the earth, snaring the leaves and gathering them into heaps that seemed like gold, in the dying light. Owen played out that fancy for a moment, ignoring her long enough where curtness was almost rudeness, before speaking. "My job is raking the leaves."  
  
The girl narrowed her eyes, gold shadowed eyes he thought, like autumn leaves dusted in the sunlight. Strange eyes, when framed in her snowy hair. It didn't look right. He plunged his rake into the pile of leaves, shaping them into a small tower, before using a wisp of Craft to push them into the silky black garbage bags. It felt like he was gouging her eyes, and every time after, he would see her face in the circles of mottled autumn leaves that he raked.  
  
"You are not Dhemlan," she said.  
  
Owen snorted. "Good observations, Lady! Perhaps I should put you in charge of raking the leaves with a sharp mind like that!"  
  
Her cheeks bloomed with two spots of color, stark on her pallid skin. She nibbled her lip, retreating behind the curtain of her hair and tried to look unobtrusive. Owen rolled his eyes, tossing the rake aside and wrestling the bags shut. With a satisfied grunt he vanished them with a flick of his Opal strength.  
  
The honey eyed girl waited until he was done. Smiling crookedly, she said with stinging tartness, "Perhaps you should have put me in charge, Prince."  
  
Owen snarled sarcastically, "Oh, really? With stick arms like that I doubt you could life a branch!"  
  
The girl shrugged, and there was a little too much smug satisfaction in her smile for his comfort. When she only sat, smiling that infuriating smile, he brandished his rake and tramped towards the more northern part of the lawn, bending over to pick up a handful of garbage bags as he walked. When he looked up, he gasped, slack jawed and unbelieving.  
  
The leaves were gone. All of them. Even the ones who had been clinging doggedly to the spindly branches had vanished. Scanning the lawns with something close to panic, Owen felt the rake slip from his hands, bouncing against the cold ground. The garbage bags fluttered to rest around it. Mother Night! He spun around slowly to focus again on the girl, who was standing, one hand propped on her hip, smiling like a pompous little twit.  
  
"What did you do with the leaves?" he asked softly.  
  
"You could do it. Even with that puny little Opal," she said with a loud sniff.  
  
Owen glared hot fire at her. "Hey, there is nothing shameful with wearing an Opal! And I'll have you know that I wear one of the darker jewels in my court, and that I'll be a Red jewelled Prince one day, and you better watch out, you're the first on my hit list!" Owen growled, judging the distance between them. Six paces, and then he could show her what the Opal could do! The girl sobered, her gold flecked eyes studiously wide, and the corner of her mouths turned down in a thoughtful frown. "Oh, I believe you are a darker prince among your court. A court of half-blooded witless fools, for taking in an Opal jewelled Prince!"  
  
"Arrgghh!" Owen cried, flinging himself at her swaying figure, doggedly clinging to her feet while laughter racked her.  
  
In a cloud of swishing silk and flying hair and little ruptures of giggles, she disappeared before Owen could spit on her shoe buckles. With an angry cry he kicked the ground, and cried even louder when his toe connected with solid earth. "Stupid witch! I'll find you! I know you're out there!"  
  
He threw out an Opal probe, but nothing out of the ordinary surfaced. Typical! Just like a woman, to go disappearing the moment before things got dirty. Never stuck around long enough to see their battles through! If it wasn't for men, he doubted they could keep their feet on the ground long enough to wash the blood off their hands before bouncing off to reek havoc somewhere else.  
  
Raking his hands through his hair with a frustrated sigh, he picked up the rake, slammed it into the ground, ran after it to retrieve it, and nearly stabbed himself in the eye, waving it around in his anger. Stupid witch, just wait, she'd be back, to gloat probably, and then he would show her! He stabbed his rake into the garage bags, then plucked them off its rusty teeth, stuffing them deep in his pockets. Well, at least he had no more leaves to rake.  
  
He was almost calm. As calm as any Prince could be after being beaten into the dust by a point toothed witch. But when he turned around again, his calm dissolved into anger, and anger boiled away into disbelief.  
  
The leaves were all back. Every single one. Even the ones still on the branches. 


	3. Quinn confronts his past

Quinn unfolded the note, lifted it to the moonlight to read the lazy scrawl. The black ink had run in his pocket, and he could barely pick out the bleary words in the darkness. But it didn't matter; he would know this place anywhere. The black barked trees were whispering his name.  
  
He slid his hands deep into his pockets. He strolled. The arching of trees dipped and swayed in the breeze, dragging their leaves against the glistening pavement. Quinn remembered himself, in a far away past. It had been hair sweeping across the black road, silken hair, and it had been the moonlight hitting his cheek, not this dull, dismal grey rain. But the trees were still the same, old and unbending and weeping the wind's subtle caress into the night.  
  
The buildings had changed. Goth had been absolved into the rain, bleached into a slate grey sky, or else into a brazen one. He could hardly tell the seasons these days, couldn't remember where he left his jacket, so he had stopped wearing it. It felt better, anyways, to be cold.  
  
Brushing his dark hair from his face, Quinn stepped up to the stone building. There were no signs here, and no numbers. This kind of place wasn't where you went by yourself. You needed introductions, invitations with gilt lettering and red ribbons to keep them secure. Red, like blood, like Blood. His lips jerked into a smile at the irony of it.  
  
Inside the doorway, there was a butler waiting to receive him. Stoic, and with a dry lipped smile, the man admitted him. He reached for his coat, and they had an awkward moment when the man realized he had none. The butler looked scandalized, and Quinn let him stick some gold set pearl cuff links onto his navy sport coat to placate him. With a scowl, the butler admitted him to the dinner room, his white gloved hands leaving not a print on the gold lacquered door handles.  
  
Inside, Quinn was handed off to another fastidious staff member. He twitched his jacket once, in a look of angst as his eyes wondered over Quinn's rumpled attire. Mouth set in a hard frown, he proffered a stiff arm, and Quinn smiled wryly. Through the velvety darkness, Quinn caught fleeting glances of passing waiters as they circulated, their faces all beautiful, their eyes cold and distant in the guttering candlelight. So Asheron was still his pretentious self, and so were his boys.  
  
His host led him to a secluded table, near the back where a frosted glass window overlooked the terrace. Asheron was seated their, looking bored. His fingers idly traced the rim of his wine glass, and the other fiddled with his cufflinks.  
  
The man pulled him out a chair, and Quinn settled gracefully into it. Ash dismissed the waiter with a petulant flick of his wrist, a gesture so familiar a smile chased its way across Quinn's mouth. It seemed nothing of Ash had changed since the years that they had been apart. He still wore his wealth on his sleeve; his cufflinks, diamond chips set in exquisite gold work, flashed in the dull pulsing of light. And the glass in his hand, rich with a silky wine, was no doubt the most expensive on the menu. Ash knew nothing of refinement, but with all the money he threw around, it didn't matter. He made sure people knew his name, and no one dared laugh when he ordered red wine with fish.  
  
"Hello Quinn. You look like hell."  
  
"And you look like the pretentious, shit faced, arrogant prick you are. What else is new?"  
  
Ash laughed dryly and gulped back his wine. The distant chords of a piano were struck, and for a moment the two sat in silence, listening to the tranquil lulling of an instrument coaxed into yielding such beautiful music. Quinn himself had played once, but he had stopped centuries ago. His fine hands were destined for other things.  
  
"Do you remember the night we last met here, Quinn? They were playing piano then, too," Ash said. There was a displaced fondness in his voice, and Quinn knew all too well what his friend was thinking of.  
  
"I don't do those kinds of things anymore. That night, it was the last," Quinn said. Across the table, he met Ash's gaze. His glacial eyes were opaque now, as he reminisced.  
  
"But don't you? You are Blood, Quinn, and what you are is what all before us have striven to be," he said, sipping his wine with a casual grace that spoke of the predator beneath. "You are what you are, Quinn. Embrace it. You will run yourself to death, trying to hide."  
  
There was no animosity in the words, as there would have been, when they were younger. Ash, the brutal, malicious killer that he was, had grown in many ways. But the roads he walked now were the ones that Quinn had been fleeing ever since his last job, here, centuries earlier. This fledging respect, it was too late, to hold any sway in Quinn's mind.  
  
"I was a heartless killer, Ash. I broke witches. I shattered their minds. But not because of my strength, and you know that, Ash. We exploited them and their vulnerabilities, and there is no glory in that. The witches that died at my hands did so because I was a coward, not a hero."  
  
Daunting shadows flickered as the candles trembled in their crystal holders. Outside, the wind raked against the windows, until the glass rattled in the frames. Quinn did not look up from his lap; he did not need to look upon his friend to see the inexorable coldness that coiled around him.  
  
"We were not murderers, Quinn. We were saviours, damn it! Those women, they would have broken you. They would have enslaved you and stripped you of all that is Blood, driven you to the brink of the Twisted Kingdom, then shaped your warped mind to serve whatever vileness that excited them. No, Quinn, we were not heroes, because we could not afford to be. But we were saviours. We had honour," he said.  
  
"I think that you out step yourself, Ash." Quinn said quietly. Ash bloodied the walls with a cruel glare, and it wrenched the words from Quinn's lips, dismissed them with a cold flick of his glacial blue eyes.  
  
"Whatever you are today is because of me. Murderer or not, you lived well. Don't forget that," Ash said softly. As he spoke, he sipped his wine. The red stained his lips, sharpening his exquisitely pale features so that it seemed that something other then wine coloured his mouth. Quinn shuddered, sinking deep into the velvet chair and trying to master himself into a coldness to rival the one which was laced within Ash's implacable stare.  
  
The gentle lilting of the piano faded, and the pianist picked out a melancholy tune. Quinn recognized the thrum of the music, had heard it everyday of his life since his last meeting with Ash, in this very spot two centuries ago. This song, it had been playing as they had eaten their steak and drunk their wine, that accursed night. And when they had left the club, Quinn had hummed it under his breath, while his hands played out an entirely different song.  
  
"I will never forget that," Quinn said. The room spun, and Ash was its axis. Everything was blurred, but for his face, refined and austere beneath a crown of platinum curls. And those frigid blue eyes, reflecting the diamond hard moonlight and revealing nothing. Whatever Ash thought, Quinn could not tell.  
  
"Good. I wouldn't want you to forget, Quinn. I wouldn't want all those other bitches to forget, either."  
  
Quinn starred into the folds of his starched napkin, elaborately sculpted to resemble a swan, its wings breaking into flight against the confines of his crystal wine goblet. He snatched the napkin from the glass, crumpling it in his fist. "What was her name, Ash?"  
  
Outside, the black barked trees scraped their flailing limbs against the window, and their shadows were like fingers, crawling across the table, looking for something to clutch. He remembered the way the little witch's fingers had curled in his hair, her charred hands so like the shivering trees. And when she had lain dying in his lap, her smile was like the crescent of moon in the sky; elusive, flanked in darkness. He saw that smile still, in his dreams.  
  
"Her name? What a peculiar thing to ask, Quinn. You've grown dreadfully morbid since I've last seen you," Ash said, and an amused flicker broke through the cold swirling in his eyes. "I don't recall her name, or any others, they were such mundane things at the time. Anyways, if you knew her name, you wouldn't have done it."  
  
"You're a cruel bastard."  
  
"Yes, I know," he said simply.  
  
"Tell me her name, Ash. Let me forget. Let me put it to rest."  
  
"I don't want you to bury it, Quinn. But it seems old age has twisted your mind. So let me refresh it, if you will."  
  
"Talk, you bastard, then let me leave."  
  
Ash smiled. "When I'm done you won't want to."  
  
And again Quinn relived that night, only now it was more tangible, with Ash's voice goading him further into the horrors that had unravelled. It seemed there was so much that he had forgotten, that had been bleached from his mind. But he remembered it now. He remembered it all.  
  
The night had begun as any other assignation. Ash had sought him out and had etched out a few details of the witch, her problematic situation, the Jewels she wore, her social standing. The witch had made her Offering, and had newly been initiated into the Black. She would be weak, but how deep her strength reached, Ash had not been able to divulge. Ash was a Black Jewelled Warlord Prince, the only one who had lived more then a decade in the last few centuries, asides from Quinn. But even he wouldn't simply be able to burn away her barriers. Ash needed backup, a tank, a man who could hold his own but still be depended. Thus Quinn.  
  
And so it was later that evening that Quinn had met Ash and his new witch he had taken as his superficial lover. She was rumoured to crave the lash as much as one craved the fond caress of a lover, and Quinn had been acutely aware of the ring of bruises that adorned her white throat like strands of black pearls.  
  
The three of them had taken a corner table. It was in the same gentlemen's club they were in now, though most of the women had been harlots with too much yellow in their hair and too much gold around their wrists to be justified entrance without escorts. But the woman draped on Ash's arm was of true class, and they had been ushered in without the accompanying wandering eyes. She had sniffed loudly when confronted with those other, lesser women, and taken her seat as if she was a Queen accepting homage from her undeserving subjects.  
  
They had eaten steak. Ash making crude gestures with his knife, and the little witch quivered like a taut bowstring with each provocative slash of the knife as it bit into the bloody meat. And Quinn, he observed. He had loved the delicious trembling of her lower lip, the way the pressed napkin fluttered in her fist with her anxiety.  
  
The piano played out its sorrowful cadence in the background. Ash had danced with her, while Quinn sat in indulging silence. Ash conducted them through the music, demure, for once. The little witch, she moved lightly with him, the lucent red silk of her shawl fluttering behind them. She did not laugh, or smile; those actions would have chipped her marble lacquer. Her heeled shoes clipped neatly against the floor, and her skirt swirled around her ankles, but that was all. She was not a woman of flamboyance, she did not bounce. That was for those lesser women to do.  
  
Afterwards, they had sipped their wine. She drank something red, and Ash had pushed a sprig of parsley behind her ear, to offset the tones in the wine, and her lustrous red tresses. Ash adored such touches, and had fallen so in love he ended up nibbling the leaf from her ear. Of course, she let him. No doubt there was some gnawing, though Quinn pretended not to see.  
  
They left the club, the little witch heavy lidded and swaggering. Ash's hands idly toyed with the Black ring that circled her fingers, and no one except Quinn noticed as he slipped it into his pocket.  
  
Outside, the night was clear. The long limbed trees hung listless, gnarled and still in the darkness. The three of them stood feathered in the moonlight, the little witch's red hair stark against the night sky. She sighed, drowsy with the night's unfolding, and rested her cheek against Ash's shoulder. His hands wrapped around her waist, though there was no warmth in the gesture. When Quinn met his gaze, there was only gleeful brutality reflected in Ash's chiselled features.  
  
The witch's fingers tangled in the golden pendant Ash wore about his neck. She turned it over in her hands, to press it to her warm cheek. Her hands froze, as she caught sight of the Black jewel set in a gold worked backing. She hadn't known, and the horror showed on her face. Caged within Ash's grip, she tipped her face to the sky, the moonlight running down her cheeks like a torrent silver tears.  
  
Her eyes fluttered, and Ash tenderly kissed her lids. There was no derisiveness in it, though he nibbled her lashes, tearing them away with his teeth and spitting them onto the road. Her teeth chattered loudly, and Ash silenced them with a final, malicious kiss. Then he let his arms drop, and her knees buckled, body slithering onto the pavement in a wretched heap. He plucked her red shawl from her shoulders and pressed it to his lips. Then he walked away. The darkness engulfed him, and that had been the last Quinn had seen of him until tonight.  
  
The witch did not fight him. Stripped of her jewels, she was not so venerable anymore. She was just a woman.  
  
Quinn made her sing, though hands evoked a darker sort of song from her ashen body. Her snapping bones rained a flurry of high pitched staccatos into the night, and her wrenching cries were like the mad banging of piano keys in the midst of a possessed man's fervour. Her back arched in his hands, tense and quivering like the first shuddering notes of a violin played as a lover would play his lady. Quinn sculpted her torture into a symphony that spiralled and plunged with the torment of her broken body. He moved through her screams like a musician through music, and her pain racked body became his passion.  
  
It was over soon; she was so delicate, she shattered like porcelain in his hands. In a haze he unpinned her hair and let it cascade down her shoulders. Dragging her limp body, her hair swung behind her, sweeping the road in a river of red.  
  
Her beautifully mangled body he wrapped in a billow of silk Ash had given him. Her glassy eyes stared up at him as he rolled her over into the coverings, and he found this disturbing, though he had never felt so before. It was strange to him, and he hastily disposed of her corpse. In the back of his mind he heard the piano playing, from the club. It melded in his mind with the sounds of her bones popping, and it would be a tune he would hear in his head relentlessly in his dreams.  
  
He wiped his bloody hands on the grass and left. He caught a Black Wind, though he did not meet with Ash as arranged. He picked up his money through a middle party and then left Goth. He didn't sleep that night, or many others after. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her silken hair against the road, like her blood, streaming through the gutters.  
  
Back in the present, in the gentlemen's club, talking to Ash, Quinn saw her face again and shuddered. Ash had stopped talking a long time ago, he realized, though it hadn't stopped the sudden burst of memories from surfacing. And they were only more horrible, the second time.  
  
"You never told me the story of what you did to her, but I saw the corpse. There wasn't enough flesh left on her bones to tell it had even been a woman. That kind of cruelty, it is exquisite. And one must enjoy it, to inflict it with such obsession," Ash said softly.  
  
Quinn looked up sharply. "Try to take more then a professional interest, Ash. If you saw, you can understand why I can never go back again to that kind of life. I almost lost it that night. I scared myself. I don't ever want to do that again."  
  
Ash shrugged. "I am going to leave now, but I will leave you my card. I will leave the job position open for you for another couple of days. Call me, if you're interested."  
  
Ash flipped his card onto the table. Quinn would have laughed, if he hadn't been shaking so badly. A fucking card! He should have known it was always business between them. They had always shared a friendship, but two centuries now lay like a wedge between them, and Quinn didn't need to look into Ash's face to know what his standings this night had done to that friendship.  
  
Ash gathered his coat, and a pretty faced waiter attended him. Eyes cast dolefully downwards and graceful, he escorted Ash towards the door. And Quinn wandered if they would not end up leaving together. Ash had a love for pretty adornments, and surrounded himself in beauty. He was a vain, cruel bastard, but had money enough to throw around on such habits.  
  
"Remember, Quinn. You cannot deny what you are. And what you are is beautiful, and it is the true face of the Blood. Call me."  
  
Quinn watched him leave. Afterwards, he finished his wine and left, stuffing the four polished cuff links in his pocket. He and Palveia, they needed money, and they would fetch a fair price. Sighing, he slipped into the night, contemplating the price they would hang around an anonymous bitch's life, and the way the pearls would look, caught up in Palveia's dark hair. 


End file.
